


Worlds Infinite

by Ferrenbach



Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Drunkenness, Gen, Language, Phase One (Gorillaz), Philosophy, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:03:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21761509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ferrenbach/pseuds/Ferrenbach
Summary: Murdoc goes looking for 2-D, who can only take so much party noise. He can also only take so much alcohol before turning into an armchair philosopher. Murdoc is more practical. There's no sense in musing on "what-ifs" after all, is there?
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	Worlds Infinite

Beach parties were Hell.

Well, it all depended on the party, really, and the quality of the booze at hand, but Murdoc felt that, of all the types of parties to which he could be invited, beach parties were definitely among the worst.

Pool parties were all right. He seldom deigned to join anyone in the water, but bars and patios featured heavily with few pebbled shores to stumble over and little sand to find wedged uncomfortably into bodily crevasses. More importantly, pool parties tended to be contained, bordered by gardens, trees, and fences. They were not wide-open spaces where one’s bloody singer could accidentally wander off and drown himself.

Russel had tapped out early, carrying a sleepy Noodle back to the hotel and leaving Murdoc and 2-D as the sole band representatives. This was fine by Murdoc, who liked to control the band’s image as much as his own, and probably also fine by Russel, who was not one for large parties and who had been accompanied by a young woman of fannish and musical interest. Murdoc thought her too air-headed to keep Russel’s attention for long, but cheers to her if she succeeded in her ploy. He might not care much about his drummer’s forays into the land of groupies, but he could appreciate someone who set their sights and sailed toward their goal full steam.

It was better than blundering around lost like certain vocalists he could name.

The sea hissed and groaned, breathing the night air in great lungfuls. Murdoc shivered and lit a cigarette in response.

The ocean could be a healing place, the salt air nourishing in ways that left city air wanting, and Murdoc could appreciate this in his own time, preferably on a sunny day. In the dark it was an unforgiving mistress, hiding unfathomable mysteries and dangers. And it was alive, with a will of its own. Any who doubted could stand on the shore and listen as the waves sucked and pulled, exhaling in a wash that smoothed the sand and threatened to ruin his boots.

At least there was a moon, Murdoc thought. Without it he would be lost in the dark, stumbling through sand and stones, the surf echoing as through some great cavern with the breath of the beast at his neck.

The silvered moonlight rendered the beach in chilly monochrome, highlighting edges, but deepening shadows. Logs that might have been mistaken for beached creatures even in daylight grew in dire presence beneath the stars, the children of old gods, washed up upon the shore.

“Bloody ridiculous,” he thought to himself as he pulled on the cigarette and exhaled slowly, letting the smoke drift into a long plume. The fading smoke changed the landscape only briefly, but it was enough for Murdoc to feel he had exerted some control over his environment.

And then one of the rocky formations that lined the beach moved.

Once his heart started beating again, Murdoc congratulated himself on not screaming and forced himself to breath deeply, masking his momentary panic. Adopting a leisurely gate, he wandered over and gave the formation a kick.

“Oi, Faceache.”

2-D grunted in annoyance and glanced up at him briefly before turning back to whatever fool thing he had been doing.

“What d’you want?” he said.

“I wanted to know where you’d run off to,” Murdoc replied, modulating his voice to mask his irritation. There was no sense in starting a row. Not out in the infinite dark.

“I’d run off to here,” 2-D replied unnecessarily, mucking about with something that Murdoc could now see was a heap of sand and stones. “It got really loud and there’s perfume that smells like dead flowers, so I took a walk and then I had a sit.”

Reasonable enough, Murdoc supposed. He could still hear the party’s music, flat and tinny, out in the arse-end of nowhere. He had not noticed the smell of anyone’s perfume, but he was not 2-D.

“I think that’s most perfumes, mate,” he said.

“No, not really,” 2-D replied, futzing enough with the pile of dirt in front of him to convince Murdoc it was supposed to be some kind of structure. “A lot of perfumes are really strong an’ I dun like it when they are, but they’re not so bad once you get used to them. You wear lots of cologne, so i’s not strange, but this smelled bad. Rotten.”

Murdoc stiffened at the comment on his cologne. His father had worn copious amounts of the stuff and the insinuation that he was becoming his old man rankled. He reminded himself that 2-D could not know this, had never met Murdoc’s father, was overly sensitive by every definition of the word, and soldiered on.

“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Murdoc snorted. “You think the undead are wandering around, masking their smell with perfume?”

“Rotten flowers, not rotten meat,” 2-D insisted, his voice betraying his level of inebriation as it quavered in his adamancy. “It was too much like rotten flowers an’ I took a walk. An’ then there was sand and such an’ I thought it’d been a really long time since I was at the beach, even if i’s not really a proper beach here, an’ I thought of when I was little an’ we’d go to the sea shore an’ the l’il ones would all play games… sometimes… an’ if my mates were there we’d do chicken or somethin’ an’ make castles. I wanted a castle…”

Murdoc eyed the uncertain heap of sand and stone, ignoring the wistful sigh of 2-D’s tone. He gathered that 2-D had not made friends easily, being, perhaps, a bit too odd to form the immediate bonds most children seemed to share upon meeting, strangers or no. Still, he’d had his mates, as most people did: neighbourhood children or schoolmates banding together in the face of boredom, becoming closer over time. Even Murdoc had had his circle, although he had cared not a whit for them. They were dullards, the lot of them, only worth keeping around for their talents. He had no real sympathy for those whose friendships were strong enough to be genuinely missed.

“It’s a shoddy job, mate,” he said instead, crouching down to examine the pile. “There’re rocks all up in the ramparts.”

2-D hesitated, making a half-hearted attempt to smooth the walls of his castle before giving up.

“Issa war,” he said. “They got attacked.”

Murdoc snorted. “Oh, really? By whom, pray tell?”

“Bad guys.”

“Interesting.” Murdoc wandered around to stand in front of 2-D and leaned forward to take in the crumbling structure. He prodded it with his toe. “You know, everyone is the good guy in their own story. What makes you think the attackers are the bad guys?”

“I’s my castle,” 2-D told him, trying to shore up the masonry that crumbled beneath Murdoc’s boot.

“What about now?”

Murdoc took a perfunctory glance to see that 2-D’s fingers were out of the way and brought his boot down solidly on the sad, little castle, caving it in entirely.

“Yeah,” 2-D said, “they’re bloody wankers.”

It was too dark to see 2-D’s expression, but Murdoc could imagine his glare as he clambered back up to his feet and tried to brush the sand from his jeans.

“No need to get your knickers in a twist, mate,” Murdoc said. “The castle was absolute rubbish.”

“It was mine.”

“Well you were doing a bang-up job of it, weren’t you?” Murdoc persisted. “What are you doing, sitting in wet sand? Your arse is caked. You look like you’ve shat yourself.”

“Oh, sod off!” 2-D snapped, his voice delightfully shrill and stressed. “You din’t need to come down here! You could’a stayed at the party drinkin’ rum ’n’ gettin’ soused…”

“Look who’s talking,” Murdoc said drily, but 2-D ignored him in the heat of his rant.

“I got some bloody sand on me? Fine! I’ll wash it off then. See if you follow me…”

Pronouncement made, 2-D began marching resolutely toward the water.

“Hey, now…” Murdoc trailed off, ending on a nervous chuckle. “You don’t want to do that, mate. It’s too dark to muck about in the ocean. Can’t even see the party from here. What happens if the tide gets you?”

“Sod off!” 2-D repeated, staggering a little as he tried to glance over his shoulder.

Murdoc sighed and started after him. He still needed a singer, after all, even if the publicity of an accidental drowning could be spun to the band’s advantage. He still needed a singer and…

He still needed a singer.

The ocean was closer than Murdoc suspected, washing aggressively up onto the shore. He halted suddenly when the water licked his toes and stumbled back a pace, mindful of the damage salt water might cause his boots. It flowed freely over 2-D’s sneakers, bone white in the moonlight, and lapped at his jeans as the singer, just frustratingly out of reach, squatted down to feel the water.

“There’re whales out there!” Murdoc called, a last-ditch effort to change 2-D’s mind.

“Not here. I’s too close,” 2-D said, dreamy and distant, not seeming to speak to Murdoc at all but to some other, unseen creature in the depths of the ocean.

The ocean was not to be trusted, Murdoc thought. Not at night. He thought most things unworthy of trust, but the ocean topped the list. It cared for nothing and loved no one, obeyed no rules but those of the moon and harboured beasts from the shared nightmares of humanity. 2-D feared whales, but they were not half of the strange things found in the ocean, and those paled in comparison to the water itself, willing and able to snatch one away in its ebb and flow.

2-D feared whales, but not the water. Not tonight. He trudged in to high thighs, and then the surf surged forward, washing him to his waist, nearly knocking him down. There was a tense moment when Murdoc thought he would fall and be swept away, but 2-D held his ground, laughing with wondrous delight. He crouched a little, arms spread as though he could gather the ocean into them, and pulled some water back toward him even as it retreated, nearly wetting himself completely. He waited a moment as the ocean withdrew, and then turned and stumbled back toward the shore.

“Happy now?” Murdoc snorted when his heart rate returned to normal. “Now your arse is caked _and_ you’re wet.”

“You’re jealous ‘cause you din’t have the bottle,” 2-D declared though his voice wavered with uncertainty.

“Your life’s not worth the cost of my boots,” Murdoc returned. “I’m also not the one covered in salt water. Don’t complain to be if you get dick itch when it dries.”

2-D snorted and fumbled in his breast pocket, pulling out a packet of cigarettes. A moonlit gleam suggested he had not entirely removed the outer cellophane, protecting them from his ocean splash.

“Give me one,” Murdoc demanded as 2-D jammed one in his mouth.

2-D grunted, on the verge of protest, but gave in without argument, extracting his lighter and holding out the pack for Murdoc to make his selection. Then he lit them both, his level of inebriation just high enough to make the task an adventure.

“Thought you’d burn my sodding eyebrows off,” Murdoc said as 2-D put the lighter and the pack away.

“Should’a had your own then,” 2-D grumbled, sulking slightly.

“It was a joke, mate,” Murdoc told him. “A bit of a laugh.”

“Well, maybe I’m tired of jokes!” 2-D snapped, the shrillness returning to his voice, less delightful and more worrisome. “All your jokes are ‘bout me an’ maybe I’m tired of ‘em!”

“Maybe you’re just tired,” Murdoc suggested soothingly. “It was a general joke. Don’t you think it would be funny if my eyebrows burnt off? ‘There goes the Flaming Fuckface’ they’d say…”

2-D laughed at that, a startled bark that tumbled into a croon, still shrill but slowly fading.

“Maybe I _am_ tired. The lights make me tired. Ever’one knows ever’one an’ I dun know anyone an’ i’s loud an’ there’s bad perfume,” 2-D said, words less spoken than spilled.

“That’s ‘cause it’s a shit party,” Murdoc commiserated. “Not even anyone that important. I’ll walk you back to the hotel. Might even stay myself.”

“There was this one girl though…”

“Plenty of birds in the world,” Murdoc said, walking purposefully toward the faint light of the party, nearer to which they would find the garden paths needed to return to the hotel. He heard 2-D scramble to catch up to him, not too difficult a task with the length of his legs, and bumped an encouraging hand against his arm, urging him toward the quiet of his room.

In spite of these efforts to goad him, 2-D collapsed on a bench the moment they entered the garden set between the beach front and the hotel proper.

“Why the bloody Hell?” Murdoc complained, hovering over the singer as he fumbled for another cigarette. “We’re practically there.”

“I wanna sit,” 2-D told him, jamming the cigarette in his mouth. “I’m tired.”

“You’re a pain in the arse. You can sit inside.”

“I wanna sit here.”

“Pass me another then, Nancy, if you’re gonna hold us up,” Murdoc snorted, collapsing on the bench beside 2-D, who lit the cigarette in his mouth, passed it over, and found himself another. “Why’d you want to sit out here anyway?”

“Stars out here,” 2-D said dreamily, looking up at the sky. “Not so many now. I can’t hardly see ‘em anymore.”

“Too much light,” they said simultaneously, causing 2-D to giggle in his tipsiness. He rubbed the back of his hand against his nose, sniffling slightly, head still titled back to take in what few specks could still be seen.

“Not so many, but you can still see,” 2-D said. “I used to think if you flew up really high, you could fly through ‘em. Like, they’d get bigger ‘cause they were holes and you could fly right through and be in a different world.”

“When was that, then?” Murdoc prompted. “Last week?”

“No,” 2-D crooned. A close thing, Murdoc thought. It would have been easy for him to take the comment as the insult it was intended to be. “I was just l’il, but I think I read a story, or maybe someone else read it to me, or maybe I saw it in a film, I dun know, about all diff’rent worlds and the doors to get through ‘em an’ I dun know if they were the stars or not in the story, but I thought that they might be ‘cause why not? They could be.”

“They’re balls of flaming gas. That’s what the real books say.”

“So’s your arse.”

The reply, more vicious than usual, startled Murdoc somewhat, but he shrugged it off as general moodiness and a cry for attention. Feeling generous, he obliged.

“I was just pointing out a fact,” Murdoc soothed. “You sometimes forget to let me know when you’re changing the subject and I wanted to ready if we were talking science. If you’re still on stories, do go on.”

“Diff’rent worlds is science too,” 2-D sniffed, annoyed but somewhat mollified. “I saw a programme on the telly. A science one. About diff’rent worlds and such. Things that dun happen here maybe happen in other worlds an’ things that happen here maybe dun happen there. Stuff like that.”

“Sounds muddled to me.”

“So, I thought stars were doors when I was l’il,” 2-D repeated, “and even that’s science maybe. Some stars. Dead ones, like.”

“Black holes?” Murdoc prompted.

“Yeah, black holes,” 2-D agreed. “Maybe.”

Murdoc considered telling 2-D he had a black hole that could use some investigating, but thought better of it. Not because it would take unfair advantage of a topic that appeared to be preying on 2-D’s mind – he never had second thoughts about such things that he would admit to – but simply because he feared having to explain the comment if it sailed clear past 2-D’s frame of mind. He racked his brains for a different response, but missed the window when 2-D chattered on.

“D’you think there are different worlds?” 2-D said, sniffling, his fingers straying to his face, rubbing the corner of his eye. “You know, about us? Like, maybe the band din’t do so well or maybe Noodle never came, or maybe Russel din’t stay, or… or maybe I—“

“Nah,” Murdoc said, cutting off the flow of thought before he lost his singer in a different current altogether. “None that matter, anyway. There’s no sense wondering about other worlds, mate. You can’t do shite for ‘em. This here’s the one you’re in, so you need to make the best of it. If you don’t, someone else will. Are you just about done sitting? You’re shaking like a leaf.”

“I’m cold,” 2-D complained.

“You’re wet,” Murdoc reminded him. “You need to get inside.”

2-D whined a while, and then complied, hauling himself unsteadily to his feet, and then stalling the proceedings by tugging at and arranging all of his clothing.

Murdoc sighed and waited and watched as 2-D sorted himself out, scratching absentmindedly at his calves more than once.

“I’s all wet,” 2-D complained, “an’ my legs itch.”

“I bloody well told you, didn’t I? Stupid git.”

“I din’t think my _legs_ would itch…”

“They caught the worst of the water. Of _course_ they’ll itch,” Murdoc insisted, bullying 2-D toward the hotel. “Have a shower. They’ll stop. Rinse your clothes, too, or send ‘em to the laundry. Don’t forget them there if you do.”

He steered 2-D all the way to the lift before a chipper brunette interrupted them on her way out.

“Oh… You!” she exclaimed, craning her neck to take in 2-D’s tallness. She sounded American. “I know you! You’re that singer, right? With the band?”

“I _am_ in a band,” 2-D grinned, managing not to sound too drunk, but no less stupid. “You want an autograph?”

Murdoc supposed she did as she was already rooting around in her handbag for a pen, pulling out a shimmery gold marker and presenting the back of her invitation for a signature. Several scrawls already graced the glossy black card.

“We’ll give you a two-fer,” Murdoc said, snatching the card from 2-D before he could return it and scribbling his name hastily while 2-D mooned over his fan.

“You’re… kind of wet,” the brunette pointed out, demonstrating her world-class grasp of the obvious.

“Oh, I had a swim,” 2-D told her. “Inna ocean.”

“In your clothes?”

“It was cold.”

“Well, aren’t you ballsy,” the brunette said, tapping the signed invitation to her nose to hide her amusement.

“Oh, def’nitely,” 2-D agreed, “but I’m itchy now and gonna have a shower. You wanna join me?”

The brunette giggled, seemingly and strangely charmed.

“Very tempting,” she said, “but I’m meeting a friend.”

“She can come too, if she’d like.”

“A _male_ friend…”

“He can come too, if he’d—“

“Sorry, love, he’s occupied,” Murdoc interrupted, flinging an arm around 2-D’s shoulders and dragging him down far enough to run a tongue up the side of his face. “Run along and have fun.”

He thumbed the lift button and shoved 2-D onto the car while both he and the brunette were too startled to say much about it.

“What’d you do that for?” 2-D lamented once the doors had closed, scrubbing his cheek with the side of his hand. “She was very nice!”

“You’re occupied,” Murdoc repeated. “You’re getting cleaned up. Besides, she wouldn’t have been nice for long with you keeping at her. What were you gonna do, rubbing your salty, soggy arse all over her? Marinate her? It’s a shag, not cookery.”

2-D sulked as they rode the lift and Murdoc briefly wondered if he shouldn’t have left the idiot to embarrass himself, but the way the brunette had focused on 2-D, laser-like, galled him. Certainly, he had chosen 2-D for the band’s front man for just such an effect, one that no right-minded bird could resist, but to see it in action burned, especially when it shut him out. It was not the flirtation that bothered him, Murdoc told himself. If he chose to work the crowd, he would match the singer two for one. It was merely the… the… breach of etiquette.

“Don’t be a pill,” he told 2-D as they reached their floor and the doors parted. “It’s rude to invite people up to your room in front of your mate, especially if she hasn’t got a friend to bring with her.”

“She had a friend,” 2-D mumbled, hands jammed into his pockets.

“An unattached friend that one’s mate might invite, you stupid git.”

“Well, you could’a come too, if you’d wanted.”

The hall lights dazzled, stark and bright, with the light of a thousand suns, a million stars, a billion realms. Murdoc blinked as, for one heart-stopping moment, an array of possibilities shimmered before him…

He cut them short with the clang of a billion slamming doors.

“Don’t be daft,” he snapped, more harshly than intended. “How many people do you think you can fit in your shower? Have a wash and get changed. You can always go back down and mingle after.”

“I’s noisy down there,” 2-D protested, uttering a low noise of displeasure and fumbling for his keycard, shoving it unsuccessfully into the door slot once or twice to mounting frustration.

“That’s your bus pass, mate,” Murdoc said, eliciting another dissatisfied grunt as 2-D dug up the correct card. “If you don’t like it, stay here. It’s all the same to me. I plan to go back down and circulate a bit. Get the band’s name out there. Make a showing.”

“I thought you were gonna stay.”

“The word I used was ‘might’,” Murdoc said. ‘Might’ stay, and at the hotel, which I will. Hotel’s got a pub, right? I’ll be in there. Join me later if you want.”

“Hmph,” 2-D snorted, pausing in the doorway. “_May_be I will. I dun know yet.”

“Or don’t. See if I care,” Murdoc said. “No loss to the rest of us.”

2-D pulled a face at him and staggered into his room, letting the door snap shut behind him. Murdoc stared at the closed door a moment longer before turning on his heel and heading back down the hall.

The pub was a good idea, he thought, a drink was exactly what he needed. A drink and a cigarette out front in the quiet of night. Out front or back out in the garden where silence reigned and he could see the stars. Billions upon billions of stars, of dreams, of places in-between. Stars, but not a damned soul, the damned souls out getting sand in their pants.

Beach parties were Hell.


End file.
